Brewery: Greene King
Location: Bury St Edmunds
Style: Strong Ale
ABV: 6.5%
Version: Bottled
Source: Sainsbury’s

Red berries and black cherries explode out of the bottle as the cap pops off and carry on through to the flavour. A big, malty, nutty sweetness dominates, with just a faintly hoppy after-taste waving to get your attention, but generally it’s jam and marzipan and fruitcake and more jam all the way.

If only I had a few oatcakes and a nutty, crumbly cheshire cheese in the fridge, this would be a slow-sipping marriage made in… well, Sainsbury’s, as it happens. The stuff was in a £3 for 4 deal, so I thought I’d give it a go. Thing is, there aren’t many Greene King beers that I’ve been impressed with to-date – they’ve generally been a bit too factory-bland to be remarkable – but Old Speckled Hen‘s bigger sibling makes the grade.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

I’ve been stocking up on a few tasty ales to sample over the course of this year’s season of goodwill (and, hopefully, good ale) to all and sundry.

Firstly, the BrewDog Paradox Longrow and Paradox Springbank that I ordered the other day arrived this afternoon, along with a couple of very handsome BrewDog pint glasses. So that means I’ll have no fewer than four bottles of head-fucking rocket fuel potentially delicious strong stout to try over the Xmas break, for a start. Which is nice.

Added to that, I’ve got a bottle of Innis & Gunn Triple Matured (which Ed sampled recently), plus one of Wychwood‘s Plum Duff, which apparently isn’t their seasonal beer for December 2008: they have one called Winter’s Troll (see what they did there?) instead, but I haven’t seen any on the shelves of my regular supermarket haunts.

Speaking of beers not being on the shelves, I went looking for Morrissey Fox‘s seasonal ale – or their Best Bitter, which is meant to be a bit tasty – in my local Tesco the other day, but all they had was the blonde ale as usual. (Quick aside: you’d think that, what with all the attention they’d been drumming up for themselves recently, the MoFo boys would have bothered to update their website with something other than the same crappy holding page by now, eh?) Neither have I been able to find any of the Shepherd Neame Christmas Ale 2008 (which Ed also sampled recently).

Anyhow, back to the cupboard. There are a couple more strong ales in there that I’ve been saving for a dreary December day: Greene King’s Abbot Reserve and Morland Old Crafty Hen (also brewed by Greene King, although when I tried to find some official info online, I ended up stuck on their bloody infuriating Old Speckled Hen website) both of which look like they ought to be able to warm my cockles in fairly short order, all being well.

And I’m planning on revisiting Meantime‘s Winter Time in the near future and hope to take a more detailed set of notes than on my first attempt. I will, of course, be letting you know how I get on…

Just when I thought I’d managed to make a few in-roads into the beer cupboard, I nipped into my local Sainsbury’s for the weekly shop to find that, whilst they’ve called time on their summer real ale promotion (incidentally, they were selling off remaining overstocks for £1 a bottle – although they still didn’t have any Copper Dragon 1816…), they’ve also gone and re-vamped their regular range, adding at least ten new beers to the shelves.

I grabbed nine of them (my missus, Jo, was heard to mutter “kid in a sweet shop”, but I mollified her by chucking a few bottles of Guinness original into the trolley as well), leaving a couple of them behind on the grounds that I suspected I’d already tried them.

The new (to me) discoveries were (in no particular order):

• Meantime London Stout
• Wood’s Shropshire Lad Spring Bitter
• Abbot Reserve
• Morland Old Crafty Hen
• Thwaite’s Liberation
• Worthington’s White Shield
• Purity Pure Ubu
• Butcombe Gold
• Shepherd Neame Late Red

And the beer cupboard now (once again) looks a something like this:

The worrying thing is, a new branch of Morrison’s opened up in the area last week, which means there’s going to be a whole new selection for me to browse. I think I’m going to need a bigger cupboard. Or I should just start drinking (and typing) faster…